ancestral temples, or by the household gods of their race and family, reduced to poor and insignificant outcasts from descendants and representatives of the noblest houses in Rome, gradually melted into the general Chris- Dispersion tian population of the empire. Those, whom of pagans. Jerome beheld at Bethlehem, were doubtless Christians; but the whole coasts, not only of Italy and its islands, but of Africa, Egypt, and the East, swarmed with these unfortunate exiles." Carthage was full of those who, to the great indignation of Augustine, nowithstanding this visible sign of Almighty wrath, crowded the theatres, and raised turbulent factions concerning rival actors; they carried with them no doubt, and readily promulgated that hostile sentiment towards Christianity, which attributed all the calamities of the times, consummated in the sack of Rome, to the new religion. It was this last desperate remonstrance of paganism which called forth Augustine's City of God, and the brief and more lively perhaps, but meagre and superficial work of Orosius. Babylon has fallen, and fallen for ever; the City of God, at least the centre and stronghold of the City of God, is in Christian Rome. Nor did Innocent return to rule over a desert. The wonder, which is expressed at the rapid restoration Restoration of Rome, shows that the general consternation of Rome. and awe, at the tidings of the capture, had greatly exaggerated the amount both of damage, and of depopulation. Some of the palaces of the nobles, who had fled from the city, or perished in the siege, may have remained in ruins; above all the temples, now without funds to repair them from their confiscated estates, from the alienated government, or from the munificence of wealthy worshippers, would be left exposed to every casual injury, and fall into irremediable dilapidation, unless seized and appropriated to its own uses by the triumphant faith. Now probably began "Honorius, in the meantime, was still issuing sanguinary edicts against heretics. Oraculo penitus remoto, quo ad ritus suos hæreticæ superstitionis obrepserant, sciant omnes sanctæ legis inimici, plectendos se pœnâ et proscriptionis et sanguinis, si ultra convenire per publi cum execrandâ sceleris sui temeritate tentaverint. To this law, addressed to Heraclian, count of Africa, (Cod. Theodos. c. 51, de Haeret.) Baronius ascribes the speedy deliverance of the city from Alaric, so highly was it approved by God! Sub ann. 410. the slow conversion of the heathen fanes into Christian churches. It took many more sieges, many more irruptions of barbaric conquerors, to destroy the works of centuries in the capital of the world's wealth and power. If deserted temples were left to decay, churches rose; palaces found new lords; the humbler buildings, which are for the most part the prey of ruin and conflagration, are speedily repaired; it is hardly less labour to demolish than to build solid, massy and substantial habitations; and fire, which probably did not rage to any great extent, was the only destructive agent which, during Alaric's occupation, endangered the grandeur or majesty of the city. If Christian Rome rose thus out of the ruin of the Greatness pagan city, the Bishop of Rome rose in proportionate of Bishop. grandeur above the wreck of the old institutions and scattered society. Saved, as doubtless it seemed, by the especial protection of God from all participation, even from the sight of this tremendous, this ignominious disaster, according to the phrase of the times, as Lot out of the fires of Sodom," he alone could lift up his head, A.D. 411. if with sorrow without shame. Honorius hid himself in Ravenna, nor did the Emperor ever again, for any long time, make his residence at Rome. With the religion expired all the venerable titles of the religion, the Great High Priests and Flamens, the Auspices and Augurs. On the Pontifical throne sat the Bishop of Rome, awaiting the time when he should ascend also the Imperial throne; or, at least, if without the name, possess the substance of the Imperial power, and stand almost as much above the shadowy form of the old republican dignities, which still retained their titles, and some municipal authority, as the Cæsars themselves. The capture of Rome by Alaric was one of the great steps by which the Pope arose to his plenitude of power. There could be no question that from this time the greatest man in Rome was the Pope; he alone was invested with permanent and real power; he alone possessed all the attributes of supremacy, the reverence, it * In Rome this was rare, till the late conversion of the Pantheon into a Christian church. Few churches stand even on the sites of ancient temples. The Basilica seems to have been preferred was his own fault, if not the love of the people. He had a sacred indefeasible title; authority unlimited, because undefined; wealth, which none dared to usurp, which multitudes lavishly contributed to increase by free-will offerings; he is, in one sense, a Cæsar, whose apotheosis has taken place in his lifetime, environed by his Prætorian guards, his ecclesiastics, on whose fidelity and obedience he may, when once seated on the throne, implicitly rely; whose edicts are gradually received as law; and who has his spiritual Prætors and Proconsuls in almost every part of Western Christendom. CHAPTER II. Pelagian PELAGIANISM. THE Pelagian question agitated the West during the later years of Innocent's pontificate. This has been controversy. the great interminable controversy of Latin, of more than Latin, of all Western Christianity. The nature of the Godhead and of the Christ was the problem of the speculative East: that of man, his state after the fall, the freedom or bondage of his will, the motive principle of his actions, that of the more active West. The East might seem to dismiss this whole dispute with almost contemptuous indifference. Though Pelagius himself, and his follower Celestius, visited Palestine and obtained the suffrages of a provincial council in their favour; though from his cell near Bethlehem, Jerome mingled in the fray with all his native violence,-there the controversy died rapidly away, leaving hardly a record in Grecian theology, none whatever in Greek ecclesiastical history." So completely, however, thoughout the Roman world Pelagius. is Christianity now an important part of human affairs, as to become a means of intercourse and communication between the remotest provinces. On the one hand new, and, as they are esteemed, heretical opinions are propagated, usually by their authors or by their partisans, from the most distant quarters, and so spread throughout Christendom; on the other hand, the Christian world is leagued together in every part to suppress these proscribed opinions. A Briton, Pelagius, by some accounts two Britons, Pelagius and Celestius, leave their home at the extremity of the known earth, perhaps the borders of Wales, the uttermost part of Britain, to disturb the whole Christian world. Pelagius is said to have been a monk, and though no doubt bound by vows of celibacy, yet was "Walch has observed, that none of gian controversy. Ketzer-Geschichte, the Greek historians, neither Socrates, iv. p. 531. Sozomen nor Theodoret notice the Pela under the discipline of no community. He arrives in Rome, from Rome he passes to Africa, from Africa to Palestine. Everywhere he preaches his doctrines, obtains proselytes, or is opposed by inflexible adversaries. The fervid religion of the African Churches repudiated with one voice the colder and more philosophic reasonings of Pelagius: they submitted to the ascendancy of Augustine, and threw themselves into his views with all their unextinguishable ardour. But in the East the glowing writings of Augustine were not understood, probably not known; his predes- Pelagius in tinarian notions never seem to have been conge- the East. nial to the Christianity of the Greeks. In Palestine, however, Pelagius was encountered by two implacable adversaries, Heros and Lazarus, bishops of Gaul. It is probable, indeed, that the persecution was to be traced to the cell of Jerome," with whose vehement and superstitious temperament his doctrines clashed as violently as with those of Augustine. Pelagius was arraigned before a synod of fourteen prelates, at Diospolis (the ancient Lydda), Council of and, to the astonishment and discomfiture of his Diospolis. adversaries, solemnly acquitted of all heretical tenets. My history of the earlier period of Christianity entered into the general character of Pelagianism, especially as connected with the character and writings of Augustine. I consider it at present chiefly in its relation to Latin Christianity.-Hist. of Christianity, iii. PP. 264, 270. Except by Jerome, who, however, received his writings irregularly and with much delay. The ordinary correspondence between the provinces seems now to have been slow and precarious. Nothing, writes Augustine to Jerome, grieves me so much as your distance from me-" ut vix possim meas dare, vel recipere tuas litteras, per intervalla non dierum non mensium, sed aliquot annorum.-August. Epist. xxviii. Were any of his works translated into Greek? d Orosius too was in Palestine, it should seem, in search of relics. He had the good fortune to carry off the body of the protomartyr St. Stephen. Compare Baronius, sub ann. The letter to Demetrias, in the works of St. Jerome, seems admitted to be a genuine writing of Pelagius. That both Pelagius and his antagonist Jerome should have addressed an epistle to the same Demetrias suggests the suspicion of some strong personal rivalry. They were striving, as it were, for the command of this distinguished and still probably wealthy female. The whole tenor of the letter of Pelagius confirms the position, that the opinions of Pelagius had no connexion with monastic enthusiasm, and did not arise out of that pride "of good works which may belong to the consciousness of extraordinary austerities. (Compare Neander, Christliche Kirche.) Pelagius arrives at his conclusions by a calm, it might seem cold, philosophy. Excepting as to the praise of virginity, the greater part of the letter might have been written by an ancient Academic, or by a modern metaphysical inquirer. Jerome traces the origin of Pelagianism to the Greek, particularly the Stoic philosophy. He quotes Tertullian's saying, Philosophi patriarchæ hæreticorum. Hieronym. Epist. ad Ctesiphont. |